Rolling on hope: Food truck to help fight hunger

A Food For All truck is parked in downtown Oklahoma City. (Courtesy photo)

OKLAHOMA CITY – What started as conversation on Twitter is now a co-funded project to help feed hungry children statewide.

In July, Made Possible By Us, a crowdfunding website focused on the good of the community, asked Twitter users to be a part of a conversation about Oklahoma City’s future. People used #WhatIfOKC to give their ideas, such as funding schools, glow-in-the-dark bike lanes, and fixing potholes.

Co-founder Adrian Young said the top ideas were helping the hungry, building an indoor playground, and helping with the homeless population. Hunger will be the first issue tackled with a food truck. All the proceeds made from the Food For All truck’s event outings will be given to the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma.

“We’re saying that instead of trying to pull interest, let’s insert ourselves into the community conversation,” Young said. “So if the community conversation is out at events and out at food trucks, let’s put a truck there with them.”

The partner organizations have contributed $18,000, with $33,981 remaining to reach the $53,000 goal. Young calls it a co-funding project because everyone can be a part of it, and it’s for everyone. There are no initial kickbacks to donations, like some crowdfunding websites. Donations can be made at madepossibleby.us.

“We wanted to foster inclusion,” she said. “If we get $5 from a million people, that’s awesome. But incentivizing around a certain denomination is not really with our mission. We didn’t want to do a ranking thing like that.”

She said there will be a celebration party once the money is raised. Some businesses will provide donor incentives while fundraising is underway.

“There’s no plan B,” Young said. “This will happen. We will do this. If it wasn’t Oklahoma City, I wouldn’t be as confident. Oklahomans will do this. There’s so much feel-good around this. We’ve had thousands of shares and engagements, but we need people to do it.”

The plan is to have the truck on the road by March. A Good Egg Dining Group – which runs Tucker’s Onion Burgers, The Drake, Cheevers and several other restaurants – will operate the truck. The company’s staff from all its eateries will volunteer biweekly on the truck, with Chef Ryan Lawson creating the menu. The groceries will be purchased from Whole Foods.

The truck will attend weekly and monthly events, with 100 percent of net proceeds going to the Regional Food Bank’s Food for Kids program. When the Food For All truck isn’t at an event, it will be at an after-school program passing out snacks created with items from Whole Foods. The truck staff will educate the students about healthy eating.

“We wanted to make sure and educate our community on healthy eating, and they can even cook things at home,” said Lauren Kerby, a team specialist with A Good Egg Dining Group.

Young said the education part is a crucial piece because after-school programs have a population with food insecurity, lacking reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious fare.

“If you teach young kids (how to eat and cook healthy), they can adopt that for life,” she said. “Competing with the Dollar Menu is hard to do.”